Burned at the Edge
by Rusty Nail
Summary: When an International case brings two different teams together working for one cause, sparks are bound to fly, whether they're good or bad remains to be seen... DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters of CSI:NY, CBS et.al. do. Coms&Comcrits are love.
1. What's Sleep

**Burned at the Edge  
**_by Rusty Nail_

**Chapter One:** What's Sleep?

"You still here?" It was a stupid question and she knew it, the unusually quiet shift was steadily approaching its end and Stella getting ready to head home after wrapping up a case with a solid arrest. Mac however seemed ensconced in his office, papers and photographs had over taken his desk, he showed no sign whatsoever of going home within the next few hours.

He looked up when she spoke and saw her leaning into his office, poking her head around the doorway, "I'm still here." He nodded.

"What're you looking at?"

Mac offered a brown folder to Stella as she had crossed his office to face his desk within the space of those for simple words. He folded his hands on his desk thoughtfully, his brows knitted into a deep frown as he watched her read over the file.

"The Gibson murder again?" Stella nodded. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this particular case, not in New York anyway; a regular shooting, two dead bodies and a handful of suspects but no leads, nothing solid enough to convict on. It was obviously bothering Mac though, he couldn't seem to let go of this one, not even for a few days to come back to it with fresh eyes.

"I can't see it Stella."

She looked up, "See what?"

"The connection; I know I'm missing something."

"We didn't miss anything at the scene, we got the bullets, we got the victims, the eye witness reports and every piece of trace there was to get-"

"But we didn't get the guy."

"No, we didn't." She set the folder down on the desk again and rested her fingertips on top of it, "The bullets weren't in the system Mac, when that gun is used again we'll hear about it and we'll pick the guy up. You know as well as I do that we can't get a conviction on every case..."

Mac leant back in his chair. She was right; of course, Stella Bonasera was always right to a certain degree. But as much as he knew she was right in general something about this case specifically felt off to him, there was something bigger behind it and something missing. Six bullets, six wounds divided equally between two bodies, two men. Both were middle aged, both were white. There was no trace of their murderer, rather the traces of the perp they did have, finger prints and hairs, were dead ends. No name was attached to them.

"Look," Stella was forging on, "How about I take a second look at it? If anything stands out to me I'll bring it to you and in the mean time you can maybe, you know go home? That place where normal people sleep?"

Mac smiled, "Sleep?"

"Yes. Sleep."

Something in Stella's serious tone connected with Mac, he nodded dully, the words had all begun to start to blur on the report pages he had been reading, coffee wasn't making as much of a difference to his concentration levels as it had at the start of his shift either. He conceded to her, nodding as he stood up and started shuffling the pages together back into their brown jackets.

Stella frowned slightly, "Mac."

He looked up.

"There'll be a new case next shift you know..."

"Yeah, I know."

Stella cocked her head to the side as she watched Mac settle his files into a stack on his desk. She wanted to tell him that no one expected him to have all the answers, no one but him. She knew what his reaction would be, stoic silence and a rueful smile, so instead she shifted backwards slightly,

"I was going to pick up dinner on the way home," she said, "you hungry?"

Mac looked up. He wanted to say yes, he wanted to say a lot of things but the phone on his desk rang. He looked at Stella for a moment and she shrugged, gesturing for him to answer it. He did so and Stella watched him, her frown deepening when she registered his grim expression. When he hung up he straightened his jacket.

"Should I go get my kit?" she asked.

"We both should."

Half an hour later Mac and Stella cast their eyes around grimly. They were in the alleyway at the back of a southern New York Bus Depot, red and blue police lights tossed shadows in every direction as they crossed the crime scene tape at the street end of the alley. One body lay on its own amidst an urban forest of boxes, newspapers and industrial garbage cans. The two CSIs crossed directly to the body, a call had come in to the NYPD from the manager of the depot, saying one of his men had been taking out some trash and found a dead woman.

Her eyes were wide, staring up at the sky but clouded over, where once they would have been a bright, lively blue they were cold and blank. Blonde hair, matted with globules of drying blood sprawled out like a halo. Stella crouched down with her camera.

"She can't be older than seventeen." She said gravely. She clicked the camera, immortalising the girl's terror stricken pose and the surrounding lumps of paper and plastic.

Mac pointed to the wall he was examining, "I've got a bloody hand print over here..." Stella turned to look.

The hand print was smudged severely, Stella photographed it and Mac swabbed it, already suspecting it was the victim's blood going on how much residue there was. He looked at it for a moment cocking his head to the side then looking over at the body, he had a feeling they had the killer's escape route.

"Ok. Let's get this processed." He said shortly, motioning to the dead end at the other end of the alley, "Meet in the middle?"

Stella just nodded, unable to take her eyes from the petite blonde for a heartbeat. Mac watched her with a tight frown, "Stella?"

"Yeah, Mac, I'm on it."

The young ones were always the hardest for Stella, Mac thought, young girls, largely defenceless in the big bad city. There was no one to look out for them and no one to care of something happened to them. And by the time it got to the people who did care it was too late; they were a case file, a crime scene and a dead body. Mac tried not to think about the 'what if's' that seemed to swarm around cases like this, what had happened had happened and as horrible as it was there was no changing it and no amount of wishful thinking helped.

He and Stella worked into the middle of the scene from opposite ends of the alley, finishing up with the void where the body had been. After the crime scene photos had all been taken they had sent her straight to the MEs office, straight to Hawkes. Two hours and three coffee's later Mac found himself once again in the dimly lit mortuary, reunited with the body and talking Hawkes.

"She was bludgeoned to death; something blunt and heavy with a lot of force behind it." Mac blinked at Hawkes for a moment, it was as he and Stella had suspected when they had arrived at the scene. There had been a lot of blood around the girls head, matted into her hair, and no other visible trauma.

"Defence wounds?" he asked.

Hawkes shook his head, "None. Not a scratch on her apart from the death blow. I did find this though..." he smiled slightly, Mac knew that expression. He had found something interesting about the corpse and had waited right to the end of the show and tell to reveal it.

He folded back the white sheet to reveal the girls left arm and lifted it up, gesturing to the skin with his smallest finger, he looked expectantly at Mac.

"Bruising?"

"Bingo. These bruises had already started to heal at time of death; she has the same pattern around her ankles too. It looks like she was tied up for at least a week by the depth of the bruising, maybe more. With rope too, the bruises are misty at the edges." Hawkes set the hand down again gently and covered it up with the sheet, "and she was raped..."

Mac sighed, frowning, "Did you get a kit?"

"It's on its way to DNA as we speak." He looked at Mac, "You get and ID on her yet?"

"No wallet, no anything. Can we check dental records?"

"Consider it done."

"Good. Thanks, Hawkes." Mac said, nodding his head slightly as he turned to leave. He was heading back to his office to look at the crime scene photos again and see if he couldn't put some of this together.

**_To Be Continued_**


	2. The Other City that Never Sleeps

**Burned at the Edge  
**_by Rusty Nail_

**Chapter Two:** The Other City that Never Sleeps

The city of Greater London and consecutive thirty-two boroughs is home to approximately seven point five million people in six hundred and nine square miles; speaking three hundred different languages, a melting pot of race and culture. With so many people living in such close proximity the city was never dark, not anymore, street lamps and twenty-four-hour corner stores made sure of that, these were the main reasons for the black out curtains that hung in most of the third floor bedrooms on Barnaby Street. Flats on the third floor flat were just on the right level to get the orange glare of the streetlights head on; the curtains were the kind they used in theatres.

In the darkness a woman rolled over in her sleep, tucking her arms under her pillow. On the pine bedside table, her phone called out shrilly and she reached out with numb hands to grab hold of it. She flipped it open and mumbled "Lloyd." into the receiver; after a few silent moments she sat up and shoved the duvet back, there was a practiced precision in her actions. She slapped the phone shut and crossed a few steps of beige carpet to her en-suite bathroom.

"What time is it?" a voice croaked.

The woman turned and looked over her shoulder, the nightlight in the shower room she had flicked on gave her hooded shadows below her eyes and chin and threw the bedroom beyond into harsh relief.

"It's work. I have to go in." she said dully.

The man looked at the clock on his side of the bed. It read as just after four o'clock. He rubbed his face groggily, scratching his chin though dark stubble that was on the verge of becoming a beard, "Will I see you later?"

"I don't know, it depends," she shrugged, "I'll call." She concluded, closing the shower room door.

A moment later the man, still lying in bed, half propped up on one elbow, the man heard the sound of pressurised water hitting the inside of the shower, then the door closed signalling that his girlfriend was now showering. He sighed and rolled over; it took him only a few minutes to fall asleep again.

The woman ran the water semi-cold, she needed to wake up. Her Boss wanted her in immediately, which meant no breakfast and even a shower was a luxury, it was one she needed. She had to wash the grime of the day before and more importantly the night off her skin. She emerged in a cloud of floral smelling steam five minutes later and stumbled around in the semi dark and her early morning stupor getting dressed.

At a quarter to five Detective Inspector Harriet Lloyd slammed her car into her parking space and killed the engine. London was shrouded in a cold grey mist and she was wrapped up in a black knee length business coat over a navy trouser suit and blue shirt. She wore no make up and her grey eyes still held a glazed stare, even her hair was still damp from the shower. She grabbed an orange scarf with an irritable noise from the seat to her right and opened the door.

Her partner rolled into his own spot just as she locked her doors with her electronic key fob. Harrie stood and waited as Ed Stone heaved his six foot self out of his vehicle. He was well over a head taller than Harrie, jovial and good natured he tampered out her more taciturn manners perfectly. They were the Good Cop, Bad Cop team of the Met's CID.

"Mornin', Harrie." He called, "Nice scarf."

"Don't mention the scarf. Geoff bought it." she groaned as he walked over to her, a thermos in his hand, probably poured and hand sealed by his wife, Melissa. They started to walk towards the entrance of the Metropolitan Police Station, "Boss called you too?"

"Yeah, sounded like he's got a right bee in his bonnet if you ask me." Stone nodded.

"Murder?" Harrie asked with a sarcastic smile. She already knew the answer.

Stone agreed, "Murder."

Matching each other's pace they ascended the small flight of steps and pushed open the heavy double doors at the top. They made straight for the Detective Chief Inspector's Office, on the fourth floor and when they entered they were still wearing their coats, bringing in a rush of cool air to the stagnated office building with them.

"Ah. Lloyd, Stone, you made it, perfect timing." DCI Tallentire didn't get up from his desk. He was shuffling papers around and glanced up at the man and woman before him, "Got a call this morning from Soho, a club owner complained about the smell coming from the burnt out bar next door, the one that was torched last month, said it was driving away his punters."

"Burnt out bar?" Ed scowled, tracking back through his memory.

Harrie slid her hands into her pockets, recalling. "Deviate."

"That's the one."

"You sent Uniform in?"

Tallentire nodded gravely, "They found dead bodies in the kitchen, or what was left of it."

"_Bodies_?" Stone's eyes widened.

"Four of them"

Harrie looked at Stone and he looked back at her, matching her furrowed brow. She turned back to Tallentire, her semi-damp blond hair swinging under the florescent lights, "All due respect sir, but Stone and I aren't on duty for another four hours, plus we already have a full case load. Aren't Blair and Trent the go to DI's right now? They finished up that domestic murder in Brixton last Monday..."

"Lloyd. We both know that Blair and Trent can barely paint by numbers let alone handle a multiple homicide. Besides, all four victims were shot; we need a ballistics specialist on this one."

"Consider us there, Boss." Harrie said, with an obviously forced smile and a salute.

"Wipe that expression off your face." Tallentire commanded, she obeyed, "The media's going to be all over this one, after the fire and the riots so keep everyone tight lipped as you can. I don't want to talk to the media about anything. Off you go."

Lloyd and Stone turned and exited the office, made their way into the stairwell and Harrie rubbed her eyes tiredly once she knew she was out of Tallentire's sight. She had nine case reports sitting on her desk; her case load was full to bursting and really didn't know if she could face another one. But Tallentire was the Boss and what the Boss said was law; if he wanted her on it that was that.

Stone shook his head, "Big black guy, pretty white woman, how much do you want to bet that's why he_ really_ handed us this mess?"

"You know I don't gamble." Harrie replied, skipping down the steps in front of Ed, "but you're right. The poster team for London CID strikes again. I'll drive."

Ed nodded, watching Harrie from behind, "What's wrong with you this morning?"

"Nothing's wrong with me. I'm just tired. We're not meant to be on until nine, remember? I was looking forward to a full six hours of sleep." She replied, a little too quickly.

"Ah." Something told Harrie that Ed didn't quite buy that explanation. It wasn't that it was a lie, she really was exhausted; it was more like a half-truth. Nevertheless Ed didn't say anything more and Harrie lowered herself into her car behind the wheel and buckled in. She drove within the speed limit, barely, and got them down to Soho in ten minutes flat.

Deviate -fashionably spelt "DV8"- was already cordoned off. Three uniformed officers stood around the entrance, behind a strip of crime scene tape. Two men in white coveralls were standing off to one side with their hoods pulled down around their necks, Tallentire had obviously told the CSUs that they weren't allowed into the scene until Lloyd and Stone had had a look around.

"Morning, Detective Inspectors," a Uniform said, "the scene's as is... no one's been in since us this morning."

"Good." Lloyd said, pushing past him and into through the doorway.

"We appreciate it," Ed smoothed over, watching his petite blonde partner don white gloves as she made her way to the kitchen, "We'll probably only need about five minutes then the CSUs can get in here."

"Alright, sir."

By the time Ed had caught up with Harrie she was in the Kitchen area, shining her torch around. Three young girls lay overlapping each other, they were gagged and had their hands bound behind their backs and two of them were face down while the third lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling dully. A man lay directly opposite them in a huge pool of his own blood; Harrie was tiptoeing around it, swinging her light to and fro.

"Jesus... that smell..."

"What; the blood, the burnt wood or the faeces?" Harrie asked grimly, making to cover her mouth and nose with the crook of her elbow.

"Try all of the above," Ed covered his nose and mouth with his handkerchief, "bloody hell..."

He knew better than to talk to much when Harrie was examining a scene, she liked it quiet, she liked to try and reconstruct what had happened, as if she could almost hear it replaying itself, her instincts were good, great even. She had the instincts and he had the rule book and that was how their dynamic worked. He was there to stop her breaking procedure as she was liable to do and she was there to pull the threads of an investigation together; a successful formula.

"Harrie?"

"Hunh?"

"The CSU wants in; you done?"

Harrie looked up; she was crouched down next to the central girl and avoiding the blood splatter behind her. She nodded thoughtfully and Ed signalled for the waiting forensic workers to come into the kitchen. She stood and crossed back over to Ed, who looked decidedly green, she started to talk but he interrupted,

"Can we talk outside?"

Harrie complied and Ed led the way back outside where he crossed over to the crime scene tape, keen to get as far away from the doorway as possible. She followed him.

"Those girls were executed," She said,

"Executed?"

"From what I could see of the middle girl, her hands were tied behind her back, she was gagged and the bullet wound was direct to the forehead, there's powder burn all around the flesh, scarring from what I could see though the blood. Suggests no remorse from the killer and a conviction to follow through; an execution." She looked back to the door.

Ed followed her gaze, he could sense a change in her, this was starting to become personal to his partner already and that meant trouble down the road if he didn't distract her. "Hey, the test-tube-brigade is going to be a while from the looks of the scene. You want breakfast?"

Harrie looked up at him with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, "Are you buying?"

"No."

"Eh, it was worth a try." She shrugged, "Let's go to Dinah's..."

**_To Be Continued_**


	3. Open Wide

**Burned at the Edge  
**_by Rusty Nail  
_  
**Chapter Three: **Open Wide

Mac marched past the lab on the way back from the morgue and caught sight of Stella leaning over their victim's clothes. He pushed the door open and entered. Stella Bonasera looked up and smiled vaguely when she saw him. He noticed that she looked tired as he took his lab coat off the rack, hanging his jacket up simultaneously.

"You find anything on the murder weapon?"

Stella shook her head dismally, keeping his gaze on a bloody length of pipe that had been unearthed at the scene and the lack of prints it had given. They had uncovered it in the garbage of the alley but it had been wiped clean and half hidden behind a folded up cardboard box,

She looked down at the clothes spread in front of her, "What I do have is semen on the pants, long brown hairs but no epithelials and bloody finger prints on her shirt but there's nothing defined enough to run. Green and blue fibres from a blanket or something similar, they're synthetic in any case. I lifted a mucus-like saliva sample from the jacket too," she gestured to the patch of the shirt she had smoothed out in front of her, and the missing circle of fabric she had cut for the sample.

"Charming." Mac said wryly, "So the hair was shed, not pulled. There was no sign of a struggle at the scene."

"The girl knew her murderer."

Mac nodded. "She was also raped, according to Hawkes, he sent the sexual assault kit to DNA."

"Jane's going to be busy then,"

Mac smiled, pulling on a set of sterile gloves. There was a pile of trash to be waded through for trace and he had to start somewhere, Danny and Aiden were still out at a scene according to Stella so they had the lab to themselves for a while at least. Before he got very far Detective Flack came into the lab, he stopped a few paces from the table, holding a note pad.

"So I asked around the area, no one saw or heard anything, go figure." He smirked all the same, "I took a photo of the dead girl, showed it to the guy who was the teller at the ticket booth last night and get this; he said that she was with some other girl, older than her who bought two tickets. I did some checking, and I got a list of names of women who bought tickets at the depot last night, figured maybe our vic was one of them, wanted to get out of the city maybe,"

Mac looked up and Flack shrugged

"The names are going through Missing Persons and CODIS right now... could be a while but I thought you'd wanna know."

"Another girl?" Stella repeated, turning the new information over in her brain. It looked like this new piece of information had gotten Mac's attention too; it explained the long brown hair they had found on the victim.

Flack nodded, "I got a description out of him, but it was pretty vague; brown hair, brown eyes, thin, pale. Said they both looked homeless, I put out an APB."

Stella raised her eyebrows, "Maybe we're looking for a woman for the murder, separate to the rape?"

"We need more to go on than a vague sighting of a woman with the victim and a brown hair," Mac pointed out, Stella nodded in agreement.

"Thanks Flack." She said.

He nodded and turned to go, leaving them to their work and Stella looked across at Mac. He was bent over a pile of screwed up newspaper, going through it for anything potentially discarded by the killer. They both knew it was a long shot but with the small amount of evidence they had from the scene and the potential murder weapon they had already unearthedm they needed everything they could get their hands on. She continued to process the clothes in the hopes of picking up something she may have missed the first time.

Sometime later her pager buzzed against her hipbone, the DNA lab was trying to get hold of her, "That's Jane." She said absently, checking the screen.

"Let me know what she found." Mac nodded; sifting through some screwed up newspaper sheets.

The DNA lab was small and always too warm for Stella's tastes, Jane turned around from her station the moment she heard the door open and close, she smiled warmly and extended a sheet of paper to Stella.

"Your semen and saliva are from the same man." She stated, sliding her hands into the pockets of her lab coat, "He has a very low sperm count, another couple of years and he will be completely impotent I dare say."

"Huh. Decreasing sex drive, a perfect reason to try and get it back through raping an innocent girl." Stella chaffed in disgust.

Jane raised her eyebrows, "Indeed." She said, "The saliva was interesting, though."

"Saliva is interesting?"

"This particular fellow's is." Jane gestured for Stella to have a look at the microscope, "The PH levels of this saliva are well above average, there is only a 12 ratio of bicarbonate ions in the expectoration and hardly any fluoride at all."

Stella looked up, bemused, so Jane continued, "These numbers are the result of a rare gum disease, somewhat similar to normal Periodontitis, though much more damaging. This man's gums would be swollen and likely very painful, he probably sucks mints constantly to battle the persistant bad taste and halitosis, but that merely adds to the already severe decaying of his teeth which-"

"-without the normal levels of bicarbonate to counteract the aciditiy of his saliva just rots the teeth right out of the bone.." Stella said, nodding.

Jane smiled, "Precisely. The ironic thing is that it is easily curable by a dentist."

Stella returned the smile now, looking hopeful, "How rare would you say this disease is?"

"About 5 of the world's population. Practically 90 of them will have it treated though, in many places in the world it's covered by National Health insurance."

"You sure know a lot about it."

Jane conceded, "My Uncle suffered from it."

"Lucky for my case." Stella said.

"Not lucky for my Uncle, he left it too late and had a whole set of fake teeth at sixty-two."

Stella nodded. She wasn't sure how this fitted into the case yet, they had a potential murder weapon with no prints, a witness putting a brunette female with the victim mere hours before her death and a brown hair, but no DNA to match the two and nowhere to start looking for this Mystery Brunette. That combined with acidic spittal and bad teeth on the rapist who seemed increasingly less involved in the murder was not much to go on.

Stella thanked Jane and took her findings back to Mac, she was curious to know what he made of all this, and more importantly if he had found anything in the garbage they had collected from the scene that could explain any of it.

**_To Be Continued_**


	4. Theories and Conjecture

**AN: **

**moska:** Thank you very much for the comment and kind words! Jane is one of my favourite characters so I am glad I have gotten her down in your opinion. The British characters are in fact all Original Characters, I hope that's not too off putting to you and that you continue to read. As for where the case is going, you'll have to watch this space! Bwahaha I shall reveal nothing... ;D

**_-RN_**

* * *

**Burned at the Edge  
**_by Rusty Nail_

**Chapter Four: **Theories and Conjecture

_Dinah's_ was a motorway restaurant crammed into the middle of London; it looked completely out of place one hundred percent of the time and it was a hub of police dining in the city, uniformed or otherwise. Harrie drove again, tapping her fingers impatiently against the steering wheel, the morning traffic was already horrendous and it was only just past six.

She pulled into the one remaining space and they got out. Once inside they were enveloped by a familiar smell, hot cooking food, coffee and the musty body odour of all night diners. They took a booth by the window, sitting opposite each other. They didn't even look at the menus; Ed undid the cap of his flask and poured himself a cup of tea.

"What the hell is that?" Harrie demanded, watching him.

"Green tea."

"Green... you don't drink green tea."

Ed shrugged, "Mel says it's better for you than black tea; something to do with the caffeine."

Harrie looked like the end of the world had just been announced, "Please don't tell me she's still on her health kick? I though she gave up all that last week."

"Nah, are you kidding? She just eased off because of our caseload."

They were interrupted by a middle aged brunette and name sake of the establishment, Dinah Richards. She smiled at both of them in turn, ignoring Ed's flask, where most places would tell their customers that outside beverages were not allowed to be consumed on the premises Dinah took a much more motherly approached, she treated everyone who came in as friends and they could drink whatever they wanted as long as they ordered something to eat.

"Mornin' Inspectors. What can I get you?" she beamed.

Harrie returned her warm smile, "I'll have a Full English please Dinah, plain toast instead of fried bread and extra baked beans and can I have a tea with-"

"Milk and one sugar, got it. Eddie?"

"Uh, what cereal do you have?"

Dinah raised an eyebrow, "Is that wife of yours still hounding you?" Ed looked sheepish and Harrie laughed, "I'll put you down for the same as Harrie, tomatoes instead of baked beans and no bacon, alright?"

"Thanks, Dee." Ed replied, sipping his green tea darkly, "I blame you Harrie..."

"Me?"

"Yeah, you."

She snorted and Dinah bustled off into the kitchen with her pad of paper and her pen. Harrie turned her head to stare out of the window, thoughtfully. Eddie shuffled out of his coat and leant back while they waited for their meal.

They had been partners for nearly six years and had not liked each other at all to begin with, in his mind she was entirely too emotional when it came to her cases and he was fairly certain she hated his 'by-the-book or not at all' mantra. Six years on they were close friends as well as colleagues and CIDs best team by a hairs breadth, their cases to convictions ratio was extremely high. Someone must have been thinking clearly when they had paired the two of them off.

"I know that look, Harrie." Ed said carefully.

Harrie brought her gaze away from the window, "I don't like this case already, that's all. I'm going to lose sleep over it and I hate losing sleep...I find it hard enough to find as it is..."

She looked down at her mobile phone as her sentence trailed away darkly; she had set it on the table next to the ketchup so it was at hand when it rang. She changed gears,

"You sure you want to eat right before the autopsies?"

"Yeah," Ed replied, "Dr. Creepy won't be ready for at least another two hours, you know that. 'Sides I'm starving."

Harrie nodded. Dinah brought their breakfasts over and she suddenly realised she was completely famished too, they ate in relative silence, Harrie added more sugar to her already saturated tea and Ed grimaced at her as she asked for a refill halfway through her scrambled eggs she made a face at him, hypocrite, she thought sharply, noticing that Ed had caved and had a mug of black tea in lew of his flask.

She was on her third cup; both of them had finished eating, when her mobile phone finally rang. It was the coroner, Dr. Oliver; she held a clipped conversation with him and then hung up. Ed watched her with his mug halfway to his lips.

"Grab your coat." She said to Ed, slipping her wallet out of her jacket pocket and setting down a twenty pound note to cover the breakfast, she gave Dinah a wave as she started out of the doorway. Ed was at her heels.

Dr. Oliver was, as Ed described, creepy. He was small and mouse like, with narrow eyes and a thin mouth that had trouble hiding his teeth, he was a nice enough man but his affinity for all things deceased gave Ed Stone the creeps. He stood next to Harrie in the mortuary, over one of the dead females; he could see the man and the other two girls over Oliver's shoulder.

"All three girls were raped." Oliver began dismally, pulling no punches as usual, " I have sent three sexual assault kits for analysis but I suspect that our deceased male friend over there will be a match. All three girls were bound at the wrists and ankles, I would make a guess at nylon rope, I collected some fibres from the bodies, and they went to the lab along with the rape kits."

I have yet to start the full autopsies, COD in all cases seems evidentially gunshots to the frontal lobe; though our mystery man over there had five bullets inside him in total, which accounts for the acute lack of blood."

"Five?" Harrie unfolded her arms; Ed looked across at her as she spoke, "Five bullets?"

"Hrm. One through the frontal lobe, as with the girls; the rest were in his crotch and abdomen."

Ed looked suspiciously green but Harrie forged onwards, "What aren't you telling us Oliver?" she asked knowingly, seeming unconcerned by the revelation of the high bullet count, though Ed knew she had merely filed the information away.

"I found a boiled sweet in the male victim's throat, I know what you're thinking and no, it does not seem to relate to the 'Candyman Killings', this was to do with the victim's severe halitosis." Oliver sounded excited.

"Bad breath?" Ed interjected.

"In the extreme, his tooth decay, swollen gums and highly acidic saliva point to a severe case of Gum Disease, only about 5 of the worlds population suffers from it this extreme, it's genetic you see but entirely treatable by a dentist."

Ed made a disgusted face, "Well, why didn't he just have it treated?"

"Detective Stone, that would be your department."

"How old were the girls?" Harrie asked suddenly,

"I'd estimate about sixteen to nineteen," Oliver nodded, "I take it you found no identification with them?"

Ed shook his head, "Not a shred."

A sigh, Oliver had two assistants with him, which explained the speed with which he completed the initial analysis, one of them brought over a chart and he looked down at it, reading as he spoke. The only man alive with the ability to multi-task, in Ed's mind,

"Well, I have prints from all of them, blood samples, photos, the bullets, everything is over there," he indicated a table that had several clear bags on it, each with its own label listing the contents, "I imagined you would want to have a look at them, Harriet, so if you would do the honours of taking them along to the labs you, you can get a look at the evidence. If you would like to be present for the autopsies; then by all means come along, standing room only."

Harrie grimaced, she hated her name with a passion, and Oliver just couldn't seem to bring himself to use her universal nickname. She crossed to the table and picked up a bag,

"Thanks, Doc." She said tartly, turning to leave.

Ed grabbed the remaining two bags and gave Oliver a small nod before he followed Harrie's sweeping exit. He caught up with her in the corridor,

"Going to maintain there's nothing wrong? Usually I'm the one that can't wait to get out of Dr Creepy's Lair..."

"God, Ed, just drop it." Harrie snapped, "You want to know what's wrong? What's wrong is some sick son of a bitch raping then murdering three innocent girls and someone getting to him before me..."

"Come on Harrie, we'll figure it out, just be patient, yeah?"

She made no reply.

Ed sighed, watching her unlock her car door from three feet away. Something was eating at his partner and he had a good idea of what it was. For the last six months he, Harrie and several Detective Constables assigned to them had been on a Sex Trafficking case, the biggest to hit London in thirty years. They had been close to a result too, as close as they could hope to get at least, when their main link to the 'Big Fish' had up and disappeared without a trace.

Harrie was still sore about it, Ed knew she hated the fact that one of the biggest cases of the past ten years had slipped through her fingers, and she was tetchy about anything that reminded her of that case, such as rape. Not a great handicap for a London detective...

Ed shuffled through the photos on his lap whole she drove, putting thoughts of their past cases out of his mind. If they solved this one, maybe Harrie would lighten up a bit. He tried to get her theorising with him,

"So he raped them, he shot the, and someone shot him, doesn't make much sense. There's no trace of the second killer from what I saw...hey," he held up a plastic wallet, "a plane ticket jacket, for International Airlines, looks like our boy was planning an escape..."

"The ticket in there?" Harrie asked.

Ed drew a pair of sterile gloves from his pocket, Harrie made him carry them around at all times, he investigated carefully but came out empty handed, "Who carries around a ticket jacket and no ticket?"

Harrie slowed, jammed in traffic, her lips pursed. This was where her history in forensic science came into play, this was why Oliver had given the evidence he had collected to her, and she knew what to look for.

"You have a theory don't you?"

She looked at Ed, waiting for the green light, "I have conjecture." She said.

That seemed to be the end of the conversation. Ed rubbed his eyes, his mind wandering back to the case they had essentially had to leave to collect dust two months ago as they crawled through the morning rush hour traffic. Harrie blamed herself for letting their informant go into a deal without a wire, Ed thought it was justified, a wire compromised the little runt's safety and if his bosses caught wind they'd kill him then and there. But he'd bolted. Harrie had been disciplined for a 'bad call', though Tallentire had done his best to diffuse the situation and took most of the heat.

He watched her surreptitiously; maybe it was something else bothering her. Her slender shoulders were tight, her lips pressed together. Her focus seemed compromised.

"Something happened with Geoff?"

Harrie's neck snapped to the left, "What makes you ask that?"

"Yes, then."

He looked at the scarf, now discarded on the backseat, "If this is one case too many you should talk to Tallentire. You and Geoff could-"

"Don't say it, Ed, whatever it is, just don't say it, please."

He shut his mouth the whole way back to the Met, it was evident she did not want his input. They made their way up to the Offices, dropped off the crime scene photos at their desks and then Harrie said something about taking the blood down to the lab, when she came back almost half an hour later she was completely different, a twinkle in her grey eyes,

"The second shooter was already there. There were six bullets recovered by the CSUs, all from the same gun," She said triumphantly, "all .40 calibre Smith and Wesson's, probably discharged from a Glock, judging by the muzzle burns on the girls I'd say a 22 or a 17, they're nearly identical, both have a slide frame so IDing the murder weapon is going to be tough unless we trip over it,"

"You went to the Ballistics Lab, I take it?"

Harrie grinned, "They called me, alright?"

"Right, so why do you say it's going to be tough?"

"The Glock 22 is a standard side arm for police forces, worldwide, they're a dime a dozen in the crimnal underworld. Now we've got seven bullets from the scene, one in each of our girls, four in the rapist--"

"You don't know that he's the rapist yet,"

Harrie raised an eyebrow, "Call it a hunch, Ed. Four in the rapist which leaves eight unaccounted for if the gun had a full magazine to begin with, I think that the second shooter was one of the girls,"

"You ... what?"

"I think one there were four girls and that one of them got free, think about it. She's been raped, bound, probably beaten around, she sees the three girls before her shot in the forehead, and she takes the gun in the struggle with the guys, turns it against him. There's nothing stronger than the will to survive, Ed. Nothing."

Ed shook his head, "Yeah, but Harrie, what evidence do you have? Tallentire won't buy that unless you have solid forensic-bloody-evidence."

"I _know _that. That's why we're going back to Deviate, I have a theory."

"Oh, _now_ you have a theory."

"Yes, I need to look at the blood spatter, besides, what else can we do until the blood tests come back? Grab the crime scene photos would you?" she asked, tossing him the keys too. Ed caught them with ease and sighed, his shoulders slumping as he heaved himself out of his chair.

It was going to be a long day.

_**To Be Continued**_


End file.
